Read Online See What I See by Gloria Whelan - Free Book Online Page A

thing, not big like me, but I taught her not to be afraid of anything and she isn’t. I’ll be back at the end of the week, and you can call me anytime.” She thrusts a card with her phone number in my hand and she’s gone.
    I hurry up to my studio, clutching Erlita’s card. An hour ago I had never heard of her. Now she’s the most important person in my life. All it took was a few words. Dad will hang on to me and I’ll hang on to Erlita and maybe neither of us will drown.
    *  *  *
    When I’m painting, there’s no time or place. It’s nearly suppertime, and except for a quick lunch I’ve been at it all day. When my cell rings, it pulls me out of a trance and for a minute I don’t know where I am. It’s Mom. “So are you all right?” she asks.
    â€œYes,” I say. And I am. I always am when I’m painting. Wonderful as it is to hear Mom’s voice, I’m almost sorry to have to put down my brush. A quick and awful thought shoots through my head. Maybe I’m more like my dad than I want to be: painting before people.
    â€œHow’s school?” Mom asks.
    I think fast. If I tell Mom the truth, she’ll have a fit. She’ll say Dad ruined her life and now he’s ruining mine and I have to come home right away. She won’t really care what happens to Dad, only to me.
    â€œThe school is great,” I say. Not a complete lie.
    â€œAnd what about him?”
    â€œHe’s fine,” I say.
    I tell her about Lila, and she says it’s nice I have a friend. She tells me there’s a big scandal at the resort where she works in the restaurant. The restaurant manager ran off with the owner’s wife. Except that turns out to be good news, because they gave Mom the manager’s job. “Only temporary,” she says, but I hear hope and pride in her voice.
    She wants to know if I have the right clothes and if the neighborhood is safe and if I’m getting enough sleep.
    â€œLove you,” she says.
    â€œLove you,” I answer. We sign off. I don’t like lying to Mom, but I can’t desert Dad. Things are getting so complicated. I wish I had someone to talk it all over with. I think about Thomas and wonder when I’ll see him again.
    I heat up soup and make Dad sandwiches with leftover chicken, cutting off the crusts like you’re supposed to do for invalids. I slice the sandwiches into small triangles so they look appetizing and take them into the studio, because he won’t come out. He barely notices me, waving the plate away. I leave it on a table and back away like I’m trying to entice a wild animal. I pause for a minute to look at what Dad’s working on. It’s a man and a woman standing in a darkened room. They’re facing away from each other, the man looking out one window, the woman out the other. They are together in separate worlds. It’s night in the painting, and from the windows you see trees, their leafy crowns huddled together as if they need to be protected from the darkness around them. I say this to Dad.
    He turns away from the canvas and looks at me like he’s seeing me for the first time. “Protected from the darkness. That’s rather good. Actually it’s how you see trees at night, as masses because you can’t see the daylight coming through the interstices.”
    â€œInterstices?”
    â€œThe spaces between something, like the spaces between the branches. At night there are no visible spaces.”
    How to paint trees at night is the very problem I’ve been thinking about. I realize my painting and Dad’s have come together, and it gives me a little shiver of pleasure. I’d like to tell him, but he grabs a triangle of chicken sandwich and turns back to his painting. I’m dismissed, but I don’t care. We have just had our first intelligent conversation. And it was about painting. I go upstairs and look at my